


Reggie's Funeral

by lnles



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Cyberpunk, Future Fic, Gen, Past Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28803723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lnles/pseuds/lnles
Summary: In the year 2049 Jughead Jones, frustrated writer, travels to the funeral of his high school bully. Jughead hopes to find his former friends there and make amends for using their real life traumas to inspire his writing. Things go differently than he expects.
Relationships: Archie Andrews & Jughead Jones, Archie Andrews/Original Male Character(s), Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones, Jughead Jones & Veronica Lodge
Kudos: 4





	Reggie's Funeral

**Author's Note:**

> SMET refers to the Sunken Met Museum
> 
> Nesquire is the rebooted Esquire magazine owned and operated by Nestle
> 
> I don't have an explanation for any other parts of this story, most pressingly why it exists

“We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of one Reginald Mantle, known to those who loved him as ‘Reggie’. Reggie was--”

The soul worker didn’t get further than that. With a heartrending shriek, a woman tore out of her seat and splayed herself over the coffin. She sobbed and heaved against it like the tide, her chunky necklace clattering across the lacquered lid with every grand gasp.

Jughead thought again about leaving. He’d taken the Bullet all the way out to Angeles Nuevo, for this? An entire morning, half-wasted because the G-Net went down somewhere in Wyoming and he couldn’t do any writing. There was something to be said for the view outside the Bullet, though. You couldn’t make out any of the shapes, sure, but their dizzying rush left your head spinning, gave you something to wonder about: was that a cow you’d just seen or a bear? A monster? 

Jughead suppressed the desire to drop a Shatner reference to the next person who made the mistake of talking to him. Now was the wrong time to bring up the Twilight Zone. Besides, that episode was set on a plane, not a train.

The soul worker and the funeral director struggled to restrain the wailing woman, detaching her from the coffin one long red nail at a time. A fearful certainty dawned on Jughead: That was Cheryl. Cheryl was here.

Cheryl was here, and nobody he’d actually hoped to see was.

Jughead pondered trying to make his escape now while everyone was distracted by Cheryl’s antics, but, like an idiot, he’d sat up at the front and he’d be totally obvious if he snuck out now. It wasn’t like him to make himself visible, even accidentally. It wasn’t like him at all.

Cheryl clutched the soul worker close, weeping into their sarong with gusto. Jughead watched her, letting himself believe it was high school again. They might as well be back at Jason’s funeral for all the drama Cheryl was stirring up and all the sense she was making while doing it.

Cheryl peeked over the soul worker’s shoulder, catching Jughead’s eye. He wanted to look away, pretend he hadn’t seen her, but it was too late. Cheryl winked at him. He touched the crown of his head for comfort, and remembered he hadn’t worn a beanie in years. He felt naked, flayed even. Like a teenager again. He hated it.

The service was over quickly, much to Jughead’s relief. The cult Reggie’d joined out here in AN wasn’t much for funerary ritual: the soul worker finished their summary of Reggie’s life and achievements (not many), and a few people came up to share their best memories of the deceased. Cheryl, of course, a few people from Reggie’s cult, and then a woman who looked sort of familiar to Jughead. But it was hard to tell. She was swamped with G-Net bafflers, her features flickering and shifting in subtle ways to fool sensors, cameras, and everyone’s NetView.

“Reggie was a dear friend of mine. We had our ups and downs, but Reggie was always there for me, like an Hermes clutch when you need the perfect piece to complete your SMET gala ensemble. Reggie loved me. I loved Reggie. We weren’t endgame, but we were something like it. We were almost-game.”

Veronica.

After the ceremony, people lingered, gathering into little knots to reminisce and swap tales of Reggie’s classic antics before the details grew fuzzy in the inevitable wine-soaked haze of the wake. Veronica stayed by the coffin, running her hand lightly over the smooth syntha-wood. Jughead made a beeline for her, already reaching out to touch her shoulder, to draw her attention so he could say what he needed to say.

Something caught his sleeve and he stumbled forward, close to collapsing into the unremarkable maroon carpet. God, it had not been vacuumed in a while, had it?

Even though Jughead caught his balance quickly, he resisted turning around. He knew who had him like a fish on a hook.

“Oh hobo! Are you too embarrassed even to look at me? Because, good. Your eyes don’t deserve me in all my mourning glory.”

Jughead forced himself to turn around. She really was in all her mourning glory. Cheryl blossomed most at funerals, suicides, and stock market crashes, and she was in fine fettle today, decked out in white except for a bright red sash and her bright red nails. They matched her hair, a toxic color that Jughead was sure now came from a bottle, or maybe an auto-salon. Redheads always went white young, and living as a Blossom was bound to take the color from your hair early.

“Cheryl. Fancy meeting you here.”

“What brings you to this hive of scum and villainy? It can’t just be Reggie’s shuffling off this mortal coil.”

“Yeah, pretty much that, Cheryl. It’s a fairly expected thing, going to a friend’s funeral.”

“A friend,” Cheryl bracketed the word in broad air quotes to remind Jughead how little he ever liked Reggie. The reminder was unnecessary. “Sure, a friend who used to bully you in the funniest ways. And you’d always take the bait too! Remember--” Cheryl elbowed him sharply in the ribs, and Jughead flinched. “-- ‘necrophilia, Reggie! Can you spell it?’”

“Yeah, I remember that.” Jughead wanted to glance back, see if Veronica was still at the coffin, but Cheryl tried to elbow him again and all his focus went into avoiding her bony arm. She was looking more like Nana Rose than ever.

“I’m sure he could go for a little necro now! He’d want to go out with a bang.” Cheryl paused, sucking the tip of her pinkie nail thoughtfully. “Actually, I do think that’s how he went out.”

Over her shoulder, Jughead watched Veronica hustle out of the room, flanked by two large bodyguards. The guards also used G-Net bafflers, and Jughead was sure he’d never recognize them again unless he caught her now.

“Cheryl, I’ve gotta go.” He meant to say it to her face, but he was already halfway to the door before the words made it out, and he knew she wouldn’t like that. Fortunately he also knew he didn’t like Cheryl and never had, so there wasn’t time to care.

Outside Veronica was boarding a glossy black jetcar, already half in when Jughead reached her. He could barely hear his own voice over the roar of the boosters, and he wondered if she could hear him at all.

“Veronica! Wait!”

She turned around, scanning his face for several seconds. Jughead wondered if she had Scorcher Eyes assessing his threat level, or if she simply didn’t recognize him.

“Jughead?”

“Yes!” He stumbled forward two more steps, hands outstretched in front of him, begging for a crumb of her attention. “It’s me! I need to talk to you.”

Veronica glanced down at the SkinScreen in her wrist, then nodded. “I’ve got a little time before my next meeting. Why don’t you come with me?” She patted the top of the jetcar. “You’ll be impressed by the features you can fit in this kind of thing.”

“When I think luxury, I think Lodge,” Jughead muttered, following Veronica into the jetcar’s passenger pod.

The inside of the jetcar was everything Veronica promised: the seats were a thickly textured material, almost velvety in its softness, and the light came from gentle bluish diffusion strips set into the floor and ceiling. Veronica sat across from him, one leg slung loosely over the other, her hands resting casually in her lap. It was hard to look at her face when it roiled with junk data patterns, so Jughead studied the rest of her instead. She was still Veronica in her body language, her affect, her style. Her dress was black, as it should be for a funeral, but accented with tiny white pearls at the collar, the waistline, and the hem. She was sleek and elegant.

Her SkinScreen flickered with new message alerts, but she ignored them, turning her arm over and stifling the light in the folds of her skirt. She reached up to touch her scalp, right behind her ear. The G-Net bafflers dropped, resolving the shifting features into those of the Veronica Lodge he knew. Well, not quite.

She was old now, as he was. Age creased and folded the corners of her face, digging furrows into once-smooth skin. He disliked how much of this new terrain looked like frown lines, though the visible weight of many sad years was another thing they had in common.

“How are you, Jughead?”

Her voice was startling, and he realized she’d even had that modulated before, not so much as to be unrecognizable, but enough to push it into a lower, more commanding register. Her real voice still had a peaky, lacerating edge, ready to cut an enemy down to size. He didn’t know how much he’d missed it until now.

“I’m doing alright. How about you?”

“I have my good days and my bad. The majority whip doesn’t have a whole lot of downtime, you know.”

“I appreciate you sharing some of it with me.”

Veronica nodded, as if approving his appreciation, allowing it into her sphere. “I’m surprised to have run into you here. I thought you hated Angeles Nuevo. And Reggie.”

“Just because I hate them doesn’t mean I’m afraid of them.”

“Why’d you choose ‘afraid’ there?” Veronica reached into a compartment beneath the seat and withdrew two cans of champagne, offering one to Jughead. He took it not so much because he wanted the champagne as much as he missed the comforting feel of aluminum cans, the way they summoned up memories of backyard barbeques and school pizza parties. In Toledo aluminum cans were prohibited, the metal saved for more essential projects.

“What?” Lost in the rapture of the cold aluminum, he’d also lost the thread of the conversation.

“Why are you suggesting you’d be afraid of AN or Reggie? All I said was that you didn’t like either of them much. Not that you were afraid.”

“Right.” Jughead set the can in a cup holder, unopened. He smoothed the front of his suit, and looked for the words to say what he meant. “I’m not afraid of either of them. But I’m afraid of what I’m here to do.”

“And what is that?” Veronica reclined in her seat, tenting her fingers. Her posture made him think she did this often, heard people’s confessions, and that she did not tend to absolve them.

“I wanted to apologize. For writing about you, about your family, and about what happened in Riverdale. It was immature. It was thoughtless. It was cruel. I used your private pain for personal gain, and I didn’t even have the decency to disguise it with more than a transparently fake name.”

Veronica laughed. Jughead didn’t like that at all. “You really are a writer, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“‘Private pain for personal gain’? You’re a poet and you don’t even know it.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“Jughead, what did you think I was going to say?” She asked. He could feel her attention drifting away. She was skimming through the messages on her SkinScreen, its glow highlighting her face from below like she was telling a ghost story.

“That you hated me and never wanted to see me? That you forgive me and missed me all these years? I don’t know, something a little more climactic!” Jughead caught himself, forcing down the volume, the tension in his voice. “If I had known you didn’t care, I wouldn’t have come all this way.”

“Yes, you would have.” She looked up at him, and Jughead would have sworn they were back in high school from the gentle hatred of her expression. “This is all about you. You want some kind of reaction, but honestly? I read the book, and you might be Riverdale’s own Holden Caufield, but you’re no Salinger. Your other books, after that, those were better. Once you got the Riverdale out of your system.”

“But your dad! Your mom! Hermosa! I put them in there and I didn’t even ask.”

“And?” Veronica shook her head, as if Jughead were a child who didn’t quite grasp the inanity of his worries. “I’m in politics. People sling a lot worse at me on a daily basis. I used to hate my family for their bad behavior, their embarrassing infighting. All of it. But I’ve moved on. Why haven’t you?”

Of course, Jughead had no answer. That was the writer’s curse, wasn’t it? No forward motion until an idea was cleaved in twain, pieced into fractions, ground to bits, whatever it took to get to the bottom of something.

But there was no bottom to Riverdale. No matter how deep he dug.

“I’m going to drop you at Reggie’s,” said Veronica, tapping instructions into her wrist. The jetcar slowed as it calculated another route, and then accelerated towards the new destination. “You look like somebody who needs to take advantage of the open bar at a wake.”

“You’re not coming?”

“No. I’ve got appointments. Besides,” said Veronica, allowing her eyes to finally meet Jughead’s, driving the point home with the force of a blow, “I came to say good-bye to Reggie and I did that. You’re the one with unfinished business.”

The sidewalk in front of Reggie’s house was dark and the night seemed unseasonably cold. Not that Jughead knew the AN weather well, but it always looked warm in the movies. He went into the house because, to be honest, he didn’t know what else to do. Veronica was gone and he was still here. He was starting to get hungry, and he didn’t need to check the balance on his credstick to know he couldn’t afford anything in this neighborhood.

Reggie’s house was a nice place, a classic AN-style neo-Spanish mission, glossy chrome trim clashing violently with the buttery stucco. It was very Reggie, in that the interior decorating appeared to be the work of a fifteen-year-old. Jughead hadn’t seen so many bare breasts since he’d written an Nesquire exposé on the stripper culture of Southern Ohio.

He was still banned from all the bars in Cincinnati.

Cheryl was already there and she was awfully pleased to see him. She gripped his wrist with one red-tipped claw, and pulled him to the refreshments table, pointing out a tray of cookies, each printed with an edible photograph of Reggie.

“Aren’t these transcendent? I wish we’d had anything half as good when Jason died.”

“They’re transcendently tacky.”

“Jug!” This voice, not altered by time or technology, cut Jughead like an icy knife.

“Archie?”

The hand came down on his shoulder, and it was only much later that Jughead could bear to admit he jumped at the touch. “How are you doing, man?”

Jughead turned, very slowly, drifting his fingers along the edge of the refreshment table, trying to ground himself in the present. The past swirled at his feet, a rising fog.

Archie was also older, but he was not callused, not worn by age. His face was still round and bright, his hair as artificial cherry red as Cheryl’s, and his suit bunched ever so slightly at the waist. He was thicker, sure, and there were wrinkles around his eyes, but he still had hold of youth. Much like he currently had hold of Jughead.

“How are you doing, man?” Archie repeated, crushing Jughead in a bear hug. The display of sincere affection was enough to send Cheryl scuttling back to a darker corner of the room.

“I’m alright. How about you?”

“If it weren’t for the occasion, I’d say pretty great!” Archie smiled, and it was truly happy, its sincerity only intensified by the little flashes of sorrow Jughead found at its edges.

“It’s too bad about Reggie, huh?”

“Yeah.” Archie shook his head. “He was so young. Reminds me of my dad. Not anything he did, but...you know--”

“I know.” Jughead already felt bad. Here was Archie, sweet old Archie, feeling bad for Reggie of all people, and Jughead was about to make him feel worse.

Archie dropped the thought like a hot pan, rapping Jughead on the shoulder. “What have you been up to lately, dude? The last time I saw you was, like, Toni’s baby shower, right? Five years ago?”

“Ten,” Jughead admitted, shame crawling around beneath his skin.

“Ten years? Are you serious?” Jughead couldn’t pull the words from his throat, so he only nodded. “I can’t believe it! You’ve missed a lot then, Jug. Come here, I want you to meet someone.” Before Jughead could move, Archie took hold of his elbow and hauled him across the room. They stopped in front of a small group of people, none of whom Jughead recognized. Most of them looked like fellow members of Reggie’s cult, dripping that AN hippy, boho style. Jughead assumed, though he knew he was being uncharitable, that each of them had highly specific and conflicting dietary restrictions.

None of the cult members even registered Archie and Jughead’s arrival, because they were all under the spell of one man, clearly not a cult member. He was older, maybe sixty, and ruggedly handsome, his face broken up by gently-shadowed crags. They bespoke years of laughter, as did the way the man held the group in thrall with the confidence of a practiced raconteur.

“And that’s how I tripped our former president down the stairs,” the man concluded, prompting a wave of delighted laughter from his audience. “Accidentally, of course. Didn’t even get sued.”

“Ev!” Archie cut in, hauling Jughead forward to present him to the man. “It’s Jughead!”

The man turned to Archie, smiling brilliantly with white and well-polished teeth, then sized up Jughead. Jughead was newly conscious of the low-quality extruded fibers that made up his suit, its mediocre fit, and the mess of his hair. He’d never gotten the hang of styling it after he gave up the beanie.

“This is the famous Jughead? An honor to meet you, friend!” Ev took hold of Jughead’s right hand and squeezed it, not painfully, but notably tight, pumping his arm up and down twice. By the time Jughead realized he ought to be reciprocating, the moment was over.

“Nice to, uh, meet you too.”

“My name is Evaristo. Evaristo Noguera, if you want the whole byline.” Evaristo Noguera: the name lit up as familiar somewhere deep in Jughead’s brain, but he couldn’t make the connection.

“Yeah. I’m Jughead. Jughead Jones.”

Archie slung his arms across both their shoulders, grinning from ear to ear. “I can’t believe you’re both in the same place at the same time. My two favorite writers!”

“You’re a writer, Evaristo?” Jughead asked, relieved to have a topic of conversation presented to him.

“Well, I’m not doing as much writing as I’d like right now, but yes, that’s the sum of most of my labors.” Evaristo played casual as he spoke, but Jughead got the feeling he was missing something, some bit of important context.

“Ev’s being modest, Jughead. He just got promoted to the editor-in-chief of the  _ Pacific Weekly _ .”

The realization hit Jughead like a bat to the face. “You’re that Evaristo Noguera?”

Ev shrugged, the gesture self-effacing, but the cheesy smile betraying more than a little genuine pride. “There’s actually not too many other Evaristo Nogueras in the publishing world.”

“Jughead’s a writer, too!” Archie’s delight was contagious, spilling over like the foam on a beer.

“I remember. You wrote  _ Riverdale: Time & Again _ , right?”

“Among other things. That’s sort of why I’m here--”

Jughead didn’t get to finish. A child ran up to Archie, shoving Jughead aside. Jughead had no idea how old they were; he was even worse at gauging the age of kids than he was at gauging the age of adults. The kid seemed kind of small, but maybe they were just runty. It was always hard to know.

“Daddy Arch, lift me!” They cried out and Archie obliged, lifting the kid to the adults’ eye level. They were cute, Jughead would give them that.

“Odilis, say hi to Jughead!” Archie urged the kid, who waved shyly to Jughead before burying their face in Archie’s shoulder.

“Got a family and everything, huh? Living the American Dream.” Jughead reached out this time, patting Archie’s arm, a little awkward. Archie smiled, though.

“And I’ve got you to thank for it, Jug. I met Ev at the bookstore when I went to pick up your last book. Never went before or since, so it’s all on you!”

Jughead smiled back, looking from Archie to Evaristo and back. They were so happy, grateful even, but Jughead just felt nauseous. He had to get away. He couldn’t say what he’d planned to Archie. Archie didn’t need his apology, his sorrow. Archie was happy.

“Well, I’m proud to have played a part.” Jughead glanced around, searching for an easy exit. “Listen, I’ve got to find the restroom. We’ll talk later, okay?”

“Yeah!” Archie was guileless and happy, but when Jughead met Evaristo’s eyes, he had a feeling he wasn’t getting out completely undetected.

“It was nice to meet you, Jughead. I look forward to talking again.” Evaristo shook his hand one more time, and Jughead wanted to thank him for letting go, for allowing Jughead to pull away and disappear into the crowd.

Everywhere he turned there seemed to be more and more people. Reggie’s funeral might have been sparsely attended, but his wake was shaping up to be a real rager. Jughead couldn’t breathe with so many bodies around. They radiated an inexpressible danger. He had to get away, so he made for the nearest exit, a shockingly clear and clean sliding door, opening the way to a wide, well-treed lawn.

Reggie’s backyard was wide and beautifully landscaped, a much classier affair than the interior of the house. Lovely long tree boughs dipped across the sky above Jughead, shading him as he lay in the soft green grass. Jughead wondered how much this installation cost Reggie in annual water rations. Perhaps the next owner of the house would let it dry up, go back to the way AN was supposed to be. Perhaps that was for the best.

“Jughead?”

At first Jughead thought he’d dreamed the voice. He had before. But her face appeared above him, white in the moonlight, and he knew she was no mere vision.

“Betty?” He sat up and she sat down, a respectable distance apart. “I didn’t see you here before.”

“I just got in. Long case.”

“Still doing the PI thing?”

“Still doing the PI thing.”

Jughead couldn’t think of what to say, so he decided to go straight into it, unfurling his great speech, but before he could speak, Betty did. “How have you been, Jughead?”

“I’ve been...I’ve been alright. How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been alright too. But--” Betty paused, looking down at the grass. She brushed her fingertips across the soft fringe, and Jughead was reminded of so many days when they were kids, sitting out in someone’s lawn, talking out every day’s drama, every mystery that came across their desks. “I noticed you hadn’t published in a while. Are you working on something?”

Jughead had not, in all his planning, anticipated this question. He had been studiously pretending not to notice that he was falling behind on his obligations, even as he defaulted on advances and watched the money be suctioned out of his cred account.

“I’m…” There was nothing there. A blank page. A blank, white page. His mistakes were catalogued there, written in invisible ink only he could see. “I’m stuck, Betty. I made a mistake.”

“No surprises there. They say growing up means you start to get a handle on things, but I think it just means you get to make bigger and bigger mistakes.”

“I want to apologize.” He willed her to look at him, to meet his eyes, and she did. Good. He wanted this to be as mortifying as possible, since it was what he deserved. She did look, and that gave him a perverse sense of relief. “For writing about you and your family in my book. I know you didn’t want that. You didn’t want things to be public like that.”

“Yeah.” She wasn’t mad. That scared him. “I was upset about that for a long time.”

“I’m sorry. It was selfish. To use you like that. To use your pain like that.”

“I forgive you.” 

Jughead started. The thought made him woozy and confused, a cartoon character with birds circling his head. “You forgive me?”

“Yeah. I actually forgave you a long time ago. Writing is how you relate to the world. It’s how you get through things. And Riverdale leaves you with a lot to get through.”

“But I hurt you. I made you the gossip of the nation.”

Betty raised an eyebrow. “I think you’re rating the impact of the book a little high. People read it, they liked it, now they’re onto the next thing. It’s been fifteen years since anyone called me the Black Hood’s Daughter.” She studied his face until Jughead couldn’t bear her look any longer. “Are you really still hung up on this?”

“I can’t write anymore, Betty. Nothing will come out. Nothing worth writing. It’s the guilt. The guilt is killing me.”

She took his hand in her own, and Jughead remembered every time she’d held it before. How it had felt like she was holding him in place while he tried to drift away. “Jughead. You need to let go of this. I have.”

“I can’t, though. You said it yourself, Betty! Writing is how I work through stuff, and I can’t write! I’m stuck. I’m broken.”

“Maybe you need a change.”

Now it was Jughead’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “A change of what? I know I’ve been wearing this suit all day, but I don’t think it’s so bad.”

“I meant like a change of scenery,” Betty said. “I’m looking for a partner right now, to help me with my investigations. You could stick around AN for a while, help me out.”

“Really? You’d want my help?”

Betty released his hand and shifted her position so she could lean back and look up into the trees. Her next words were so quiet Jughead thought he might have imagined them. “Maybe I’m a little stuck too.”

“Thank you, Betty. I really mean it. The fact that you’d do this for me, it’s just--”

Betty waved away his words. “We were everything to each other once, Jug. You’re still a little part of me, even now.” She gave him a small, sad smile. “I take care of myself.”

Jughead couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he said the obvious one more time: “Thank you.”

Betty looked about to reply, but above them the sky flashed brilliant white and then a huge G-Net projection bloomed out across it. It was Reggie. He looked oddly happy, smiling benevolently down on the whole city. “Hello, friends. If you’re seeing this, your old pal Reggie has finally tapped out. But not to worry. I’ve got one last prank left, and I promise you won’t forget this one.” 

Reggie ducked out of frame for a moment, leaving the sky empty and colorless. His voice still carried, a little fainter than before. “Now when they see this, it’ll be, like, huge, right? Okay, great.” Reggie leaned back into view and waved. 

Jughead imagined the scale of this Reggie projection. He could crush them both under the heel of his hand. But instead the huge Reggie giggled like a kid who’d found the perfect place for his whoopie cushion. “Get ready, kids. This one’s a real wild ride.” He started to walk out of frame once more, but stopped just where the white of the projection met the blue-black of the sky. “See you on the other side. ‘Til then, this is your boy Reggie, signing out.”

With a last wave, he disappeared, the projection collapsing. In its place rose a storm of lights, whirling and shifting, a flock of living stars. Jughead guessed they were drones. They danced across the sky, so many that they must have been visible everywhere in AN. They rushed together and then exploded out, their lights resolving into...into…

Jughead and Betty saw it at the same time: the drones spelled out “Jughead Jones likes farts”.

“Wow, top billing, Jug. That’s an honor.”

“Can’t believe he was thinking about me, even at the end.”

“Uh oh.” Betty pointed up to the twinkling, shifting lights. “I think I’m next.” And indeed the lights now spelled out “Betty Cooper” until they suddenly shifted and “Cooper” became, stupidly, “Pooper”.

Jughead tried not to laugh, biting his lip, until he heard Betty start to giggle, and he decided it was safe to let go. They both howled with laughter, not even at the pun, but at the idea that Reggie would want it to headline at his funeral. That Reggie would be so confident in his humor and appeal that he’d broadcast these insults so every person in AN could see them.

It was almost inspiring.

Laughing there in the dark, illuminated by the distant glow of the drones spelling out “Archie Andrews can’t read”, Jughead thought that life in Angeles Nuevo might not be so bad.

Either way, he was about to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> Reflecting on this concept, despite its weirdness, I've become sort of enamored by it, and am haunted by the possibility of future adventures to be had by cyberpunk future PIs Betty and Jughead. Much to consider.
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
